


Clearest Blue

by des_cieux



Category: Bleach, Psycho-Pass
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 09:20:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15748803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/des_cieux/pseuds/des_cieux
Summary: Rukia’s eyes are no longer blue-tinged from the firearm’s biometric scan; they’re violet, Ichigo realizes, as she reads his face like some human embodiment of the Sibyl System, except...she appears to be contemplating whether she can speak openly with him and trust him, not whether he’s psychologically stable this very moment. He imagines his own eyes would have a blue cast to them if he were looking into the Dominator’s scanner as he's supposed to be doing instead of staring at her. Despite the fixating wideness of her eyes, he feels like she has already made up her mind about shuttering herself to him.Bleach/Psycho Pass AU Crossover





	Clearest Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to properly respond to the prompt of eye contact, but primarily, this is a Bleach/Psycho Pass AU!

_Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo,_ _November 2112_

 

Auburn mane aside, Ichigo figures he blends in with the horde of suited salarymen pouring out from the subway and heading briskly to work in this ward. For him though, it’s his first day of substantive employment, and while his suit is just a holo overlay, his dress shoes are real and pinch at his feet as he realizes how his destination demands a longer walk. To his left and right, the torrent of people begins to thin as smaller streams of employees trickle into corporate office buildings as well as ministries and agencies. Once or twice, Ichigo passes the signage of a foreign corporation. Back in his father’s day, much more international influence had permeated Japan, but now, what use has Japan for contact with the outside world, war-torn as it purportedly is according to the nightly news.

 

Ahead of him looms the city’s tallest structure, NONA Tower. As Ichigo approaches, the two drones stationed at the main entrance swivel toward him with curious beeps that quickly revert to disinterested as they scan his Psycho-Pass and deem him psychologically stable. In Western Tokyo’s Karakura Town where he’d grown up, major public spaces like his high school had cymatic scanners to monitor people’s stress levels. In this ward of Tokyo though, every urban block had scanners, drones patrolled the sidewalks, and he’d observed his fellow subway riders checking their Hues via smartwatches and compact mirrors.

 

His own watch reads ten minutes to nine, and as Ichigo steps into the elevator, he supposes he’s as ideally timely as could be because the other person along for the ride is none other than the top-ranked student of his former university.

 

“Oh hey, Ishida Ametatsu right?”

 

“It’s Ishida Uryū actually. And you’re Kurosaki Ichigo...never thought I’d see you again after graduation. You sure you’re in the right place?”

 

Annoyance bristles inside Ichigo, but he matches Ishida’s cold smile and nonchalantly replies, “You’re not the only one who can get a decent score on a test okay?”

 

“Oh I always heard you were a passable student, but frankly, I’m surprised your Psycho-Pass met the threshold for this job. If anything, you seem more like the Enforcer type —”

 

“And you seem like the leap to conclusions type. Are _you_ sure you’re right for this job?”

 

The elevator doors slide open.

 

“Our new Inspectors! Already friendly I see. How wonderful to have new blood leading Division 1.” A wide smile stretches from cheek to cheek of this fox-faced interrupter, but the lack of sincerity in tone and the man’s slitted perusal does not prompt Ichigo to lose his scowl.

 

“Inspector Ichimaru of Division 5,” the silver-haired agent introduces himself. “Pleased to welcome you both to the Criminal Investigation Department of the Public Safety Bureau. I’m afraid we don’t have much of an orientation program here at the CID for you rookies, but I’ll do my best to provide you with a bit of an initiation before we throw you to the sharks.”

 

Their shoes click against the polished floor as they follow the senior Inspector through the forbidding hallways of steel posts framing concrete walls. Ichimaru ushers them through a door, and they enter a glaringly lit office. With each computer workstation sporting multiple monitors and loud fans blasting along the pipe-exposed, industrial-style walls, the space feels crowded with equipment, if not necessarily with people considering only four motley figures are occupying the desks.

 

“Oh goodie, the hounds are hard at work,” remarks Ichimaru despite one man not bothering to minimize his screen display of music notation software and a young woman still tabbing through her manga. “Gentlemen, meet your Enforcers.”

 

Chief among the reasons why Ichigo’s classmates back home had expressed confusion about his taking this particular job had been the prospect of working with Enforcers, the so-called latent criminals whose scanner-determined probability of committing a crime had surpassed the Crime Coefficient threshold of 100.

 

The blonde-bobbed male appears the most friendly, delivering a brief wave and another very wide smile, albeit one less discomforting than Ichimaru’s. With a nudge from Blonde Bob, the other blonde Enforcer, tiny in stature and sporting pigtails, also flashes them a smile, sharp and snaggle-toothed. Standing slightly apart from them looms an older man whose dark locks graze the shoulders of his long, black overcoat. The fourth Enforcer, another petite young woman in a neat and trim suit, has her black hair, save for the escaped strands stroking her jawline, mostly pulled into a ponytail. Whereas the first two Enforcers seem comparably approachable and the third relatively apathetic, the dark-haired woman looks downright disconcerted to see them.

 

Or perhaps, just Ichigo, because as soon as Ichimaru suggests that the Enforcers show the new Inspectors more of the resources around headquarters, the black-haired young woman moves swiftly toward Uryū as if to snag him first.

 

“Rukia-chan, why don’t you partner with young Kurosaki over here?” chimes Ichimaru. “I think if you take him for a whirl in the sparring room, you’ll find he’s about the height and build of your former partner.”

 

A polite and innocuous suggestion on the surface, but the clenching of this Rukia’s jaw and the stiffening of her shoulders inform Ichigo that the other Inspector’s input was a much more targeted jab. Rukia brightens in an instant though, returning a superficial smile at Ichimaru and redirecting her path toward Ichigo.

 

“Certainly. Inspector Kurosaki, please follow me.”

 

“I think I can show myself around if you want to go back and finish reading your — I mean, finish doing your own stuff,” Ichigo offers as soon as they’re out of the others’ earshot.

 

“It’s fine,” she firmly assures him, tossing a wry smile over her shoulder. “Besides, if a firearm-brandishing rookie is going to be running around with us, I might as well make sure myself that he’s not a hopeless shot.”

 

Miffed, he scratches the back of his neck and mutters, “I get it. I’m new, but I’m not exactly unqualified. The Sibyl System’s occupational aptitude tests gave me an A ranking for this job and said —”

 

“That you’re a perfect fit for this role,” Rukia seamlessly completes the sentence for him. And again, that rueful, bittersweet smile. “I know. I was an Inspector too, a couple of years ago.”

 

She punches in a code for a keypad, and they enter a room lined with panels that unlock to reveal the orthogonal-muzzled guns called Dominators.

 

“Curious, isn’t it, how we have so many...tests telling us what to do these days,” she remarks without any particular inflection as she grips and lifts a Dominator off the wall. Her statement sounded neutral, but Ichigo feels like she’s performing some unspoken test on him as she waves for Ichigo to follow her into an adjoining room set up as a shooting range.

 

“The Dominator operates throughout Tokyo via a wireless connection to the Sibyl System,” she explains. “Should a suspect ever knock the gun out of your hands, don’t waste time worrying that they try and shoot at you. See this biometric safeguard here? Dominators are registered only to Inspectors and Enforcers, and they require authentication of your identity before you can use them. Well, use them in the opening fire sense. Desperate people get creative out there and could always just clobber you in the head with this.”

 

Electric blue light illuminates Rukia’s face as the gun processes its biometric scan of her irises and fingerprints before activating in her hands. “For demonstration purposes, you locate a target.” She raises the Dominator at a synthetic tissue mannequin straight across the room.

 

Ichigo gives a slight start as the weapon begins to speak to them in a calm, computerized female voice. “Target practice mode is set at Non-Lethal Paralyzer. Please aim carefully.”

 

“When you lock in on a human target, the Dominator runs a test of sorts. It reads the person’s psychological state, sends that information to the Sibyl System for calculation of the person’s Crime Coefficient and likelihood of engaging in criminal action, and then transitions into certain modes depending on that calculation. If the target’s Crime Coefficient exceeds 100, the Dominator fires at its lowest mode, Non-Lethal Paralyzer, so that we can knock the target out and bring him or her into custody.”

 

Overhead, the ceiling’s target carrier system suddenly zig-zags and accelerates the mannequin Rukia was aiming at, and the dummy travels from twenty-five meters away to fifteen in a blink, then crossing five meters to still rush at them. A burst of blue energy emits from the Dominator and blows the mannequin back to ten.

 

Ichigo breathes out, his mind summoning unbidden, disturbing scenarios of what the Dominator’s even higher modes can inflict as Rukia hands the Dominator to him.

 

“You mentioned you wanted to see if I’m a decent shot or not, but does it really matter with this kind of weapon?” he questions, hefting and acquiring a feel for the weight of the gun. “Seems like I can’t do anything with the Dominator unless Lady Robot Voice approves it.”

 

Rukia’s eyes are no longer blue-tinged from the firearm’s biometric scan; they’re violet, Ichigo realizes, as she reads his face like some human embodiment of the Sibyl System, except...she appears to be contemplating whether she can speak openly with him and trust him, not whether he’s psychologically stable this very moment. He imagines his own eyes would have a blue cast to them if he were looking into the Dominator’s scanner as he's supposed to be doing instead of staring at her. Despite the fixating wideness of her eyes, he feels like she has already made up her mind about shuttering herself to him.

 

“Yes, in one sense, I get what you’re saying,” she tells him slowly, and her small hands wrap around his knuckles to his confusion before he notices the scanner’s pop-up message instructing him to press harder so that it can properly commit his fingerprints to its database memory. “Japan has adopted the Sibyl System’s software as the structural foundation of society, and as law enforcement officers, our duty is to carry out Sibyl’s judgment.” Her mouth puckers into a moue, choosing every word oh so carefully now. “But I still think it’s important that you maintain responsibility when wielding this firearm. You’re the one who decides when it’s time to bring out the Dominator, at whom to point it in the midst of chaotic action, and while Sibyl computes her judgment...there may be circumstances where your own human judgment is more appropriate than what a supercomputer or other higher ups tell you.”

 

Her voice trails away as she concludes, and Ichigo can guess that some personal experience has compelled her to say things so off-script from what university and the Career Instruction Center taught, but Rukia is pointedly not in the mood to share because she moves toward the control module to deactivate the range.

 

“That’s enough of an introduction to the weaponry today. Why don’t I take you to meet the lab technicians? Hopefully, Rangiku-san is around and not Mayuri.”

 

Following her past the stockpile of arms that strikes one as more suitable for a military unit than an urban police force, Ichigo can only wonder if Ishida is receiving the same mixed vibes of ‘welcome, welcome!’ and ‘get out while you can’ as he is.  
  
  



End file.
